Appalling Naples

  Well, I'm not gonna lie to you, it's true that when my girlfriend told me she absolutely wanted us to spend a romantic weekend in Naples, deep in my stomach, I felt the needles of my bad-plan detector go crazy. A destination systematically ranked in all the “top 10 best destinations to spend a weekend in Europe”, served by every low-cost airlines, and what’s more, bathed in winter, by the Mediterranean sun, when the entire Northern Europe population looks like an army of junkies ready to kill each other for their dose of vitamin D. In short, the perfect combo for a touristic disaster: shabby hotels at five-stars palace prices, narrow streets flooded with hordes of undereducated tourists, endless queues in front of the slightest monument and standardized junk food defrosted in the microwave, which is sold to us like authentic mama's cooking. No, really thanks, but no thanks. So it is without hesitation that I gathered my courage to reply to my girlfriend: “of course darling, we’ll go wherever you want. As long as I'm with you, I’m happy, you know..."

I know, I know. Believe me, I'm not proud of myself. I know what you are thinking and you are right: “you are just a coward” “you betrayed your ideals for love” “we trusted you”, “you were a role model for us”, “our white knight against mass tourism", "our glimmer of hope in a world where there are no longer any authentic sites to explore " yes, you are right, but I will explain. Well, to begin with, no one is truly incorruptible, and even the bests of us have their moments of weakness. Sincerely, look me in the eyes and tell me without trembling that if Ghandi had had to apply for a license plate registration at the French administration, he would not have ended up breaking his philosophy of non-violence? Well, secondly, although I have developed a fairly fine sense of intuition when it comes to avoiding tourist traps, I am not however entirely safe from the little optimist who sleeps in me and who sometimes, in a spike of hope, wakes up to whisper in my ear: “stop seeing everything from the dark side, for once, couldn't you tell yourself it's going to be okay? After all, the city is big, we will be able to find some quiet little corners away from the crowd, where we can taste the authentic charm of Italy, right? And then, there are the ruins of Pompeii too, ever since you read about them in your history books when you were a kid, you've always wanted to see them, right? Okay, couldn't you just relax a little for once, eh? Just close your eyes to the negative aspects to be able to appreciate the good side of things and finally experience yourself too this carefreeness, this lightness of all these happy people you see around you, who do not ask themselves all these existential questions and who are just happy to hold hands, eye to eye, at the airport Starbucks while sipping their eight euro Iced Caramel Macchiato. Come on Mr. Grumpy, is it too much to ask for a little smile? You have to stop taking everything to heart like that, life is made for dancing after all, you are going to spend a weekend in Italy, by the sea, is it really going to be so terrible?

Well guess what, of course it was! No, but really, how could I have been so naive? What an idiot seriously! No, there weren't many tourists, no, there was a tsunami of tourists! It seemed that the whole world had been plotting to come to Naples this weekend. What a hell, just imagine a city taken over by flocks of tourists to the point of blocking the narrow streets of the city center, like fat clots in the arteries of an obese person on the verge of a heart attack. A flow so viscous that it was almost motionless and in which we found ourselves, barely leaving the hotel, stuck for hours just to go a few streets further, to the pizzeria da Michele, “the oldest pizzeria in Naples” (I know, just from that, I should have sensed the trap...) and there, discover when we finally reached, a compact crowd which was laying siege in front of the small shop and through which we had to patiently elbow our way to the counter to be able to place our order and then wait, starving, for three quarters of an hour to collect our pizza before looking for a place in the street, among the people sitting on the ground in the gutter, among the trash, to be able to sit down, open our cardboard box and discover an ordinary pizza with the dough not even cooked in the middle. How did the human species get to that?

The next morning, although still early, the queue of several hundred meters in front of the Cristo Velato decided us to turn around and go instead directly to Pompeii. But once on the train that took us there, sitting arm in arm like schoolkids on an excursion, our noses at the window, looking at the city which was disappearing little by little, replaced by orchards of lemon and orange trees which cascaded the slopes of Vesuvius in stepped terraces to the sea, Italy finally appeared. The heart lightened and we let ourselves get carried away by the sweet music of life. The sun was shining, the air felt soft and we were on the way to discover an exceptional site. Here I am, young patrician, draped in my toga, walking along the cobbled streets, leaving the domus Vettii to go to the thermae stabiae where my friend Flavius ​​Caelus, waiting for me, is going to introduce me to the consul Caius Lulius who will perhaps open for me the doors of the Senate of Rome as a start and then help me become proconsul of...but, what is happening? the earth is shaking? and what is that over the Vesuvius? It looks like a huge cloud rising into the sky! by mercury! quickly, we must flee, but where? towards the sea perhaps? ho no, we are trapped!...huh? what? what is it? ah, have we arrived yet?

Well, I should have known better, the site of course was saturated with people: large families with screaming brats in their strollers, organized tours with guides spouting standardized uninteresting speeches into megaphones to decerebrated tourists, who were not listening anyway since they were too busy taking pictures of themselves with their selfie stick, to brag on social medias that they too go to the places where everyone goes and maybe also to prove to themselves that they really went there, since they would have completely missed out on their visit, understanding nothing about it and taking home absolutely nothing from it other than a short distraction in their life of boredom.

So, crushed by the sadness of seeing yet another dream site of my childhood disappears into a mediocre reality, I sat on the edge of the sidewalk to curl up like a foetus and cry softly over the heartbreaking disenchantment of the world. And my tears which fell on the large black slabs of the street, rolled to the middle of the road where suddenly I saw the ruts dug in the stone by the passage of thousands of carts over the course of centuries. And in an instant, the site emptied, silence fell in my head and finally, I could hear again the echoes of a distant past, which still resonate in the streets of Pompeii.

So, what’s the lesson here ?

What’s important, is to learn from experiences, good or bad. And very often the bad ones are particularly rich in lessons. The lesson learnt here (again) is to not follow the rest of the herd but to branch off onto the road less traveled. And we then discover that the attendance at tourist sites follows a very unbalanced distribution rule: the very well-known sites are over-crowded, and the lesser-known sites are almost empty. A few weeks after this disastrous visit to Pompeii, while exploring the small roads of the Provence hinterland, we came across this magnificent ancient Roman city, where we were practically alone, and were able to enjoy walking around in complete tranquility. I experienced the same phenomenon in Peru few years back, where I felt absolutely nothing during my visit to Machu Picchu because of the crowd, while other cities around, just as moving, are empty of tourists.